Four years after it launched WKND 99.5, eager to introduce a new French-language commercial music station in Montreal to compete with the Bell and Cogeco behemoths, Leclerc Communication has thrown in the towel, laying off its on-air staff and choosing instead to source half its programming from Quebecor’s QUB Radio and fill the rest with low-budget rock music.

On Aug. 26, the station once known as Radio Classique will be renamed … well, there isn’t really a name for it. It’s just “99,5 Montréal”. The schedule will be identical to Quebecor’s digital opinion talk radio service between 6am and 6pm weekdays, just enough to stay under the limit of 50% talk programming so it doesn’t have to seek pre-approval from the CRTC for a format change.

QUB, meanwhile, will transition to a more radio-sounding format, with Mario Dumont becoming the morning man. There will also be regular news updates and, presumably, weather and traffic. Isabelle Maréchal, a former midday host at 98.5 FM, takes over the late morning slot, and QUB stalwarts Benoit Dutrizac, Sophie Durocher and Richard Martineau fill out the daytime schedule. Presumably evenings and weekends on QUB will still be mainly repeats and podcasts.

Evenings and weekends on 99.5 will be rock music, though Leclerc was vague on what that would sound like and how much of it would have real people behind the microphone.

The change is an admission that, despite Leclerc’s assurance that Montreal was hungry for the allegedly unique format of WKND, habits die hard and it takes a lot of time and money to pull people away from the incumbents, especially when your transmitter isn’t as powerful, you don’t have a large conglomerate to help promote it, and your industry is already suffering because of post-pandemic lifestyle changes and advertising declines.

Is this legal?

The program supply agreement between Leclerc and Quebecor is unusual, but it’s not unprecedented. Same for the half-talk half-music format. But whether it meets CRTC regulations may be up to the commission to decide. Let’s look at the issues:

De facto control

This may be the trickiest issue for Leclerc to navigate. The CRTC requires that any radio station get prior approval before a change in what’s known as effective control. So if Leclerc wanted to sell the station to Quebecor or any other company not owned by the Leclerc family, it needs approval.

There’s a related rule that the licensee must be in charge of the licence and its broadcasting. So Leclerc can’t simply hand over the reins to Quebecor during the day, it still needs to be in charge, even if it’s sourcing its programming from QUB. But it can still receive its programming from Quebecor — broadcasters get their programming from other companies all the time. In some cases, like when CBC allowed Rogers to take over its television stations during Hockey Night in Canada, the CRTC may require a network licence, but that’s doable if necessary (though because QUB Radio itself isn’t licensed, it’s not clear how that would work).

In the end this may be a judgment call, but Leclerc is probably OK here, provided 99.5 maintains distinct branding, QUB Radio doesn’t pretend it owns 99.5, and Leclerc sells its own advertising and has administrative staff.

Talk format

The CRTC doesn’t normally regulate formats of commercial radio stations. Unless there’s a specific licence condition that prevents it, most stations can switch between Top 40, rock and country as they wish. Where CRTC approval is required is if an FM station wants to switch to or from a “specialty” format, and talk radio is considered a specialty.

Under the current rules, music stations can have up to 50% of their schedule as talk radio without needing a licence change, but if it goes above that, it’s considered specialty. This is why the station is only going talk from 6am to 6pm weekdays. So long as the rest of its schedule (6pm to midnight weekdays and 6am to midnight weekends; overnights don’t count for this calculation) is music, they’re ok.

This isn’t the first time this system has been used. When RNC Media tried to make Radio X work in Montreal on a station that was still licensed as a jazz music station, it kept the talk to 6am to 7pm weekdays and had music on weekends. Same thing when CHMP-FM 98.5 in Montreal switched from “Cool FM” to its news-talk format in 2004, until a licence amendment was approved a year later.

So long as 99.5 sticks to this schedule (with possible repeats during unregulated overnights), it should be in the clear.

Quebecor’s cross-media ownership

If you’re wondering why Quebecor wouldn’t just buy the station, it’s because of a CRTC limit on cross-media ownership that says a company can’t own a daily newspaper, TV station and radio station in the same market. Because Quebecor owns the Journal de Montréal and TVA, it can’t control a radio station in Montreal. This is why it launched QUB Radio as a digital-only outlet.

Letting the station continue to be controlled by Leclerc might be seen as making an end-run around this limit. But so long as the CRTC is convinced that Leclerc is still in de facto control of the station, this doesn’t seem to be breaking any rules. Though it may prompt the commission to review its policies.

Is this good?

ADISQ, which represents Quebec’s music recording industry, is obviously disappointed by this change. And it sucks for the on-air staff who were let go, including Étienne Boulay, Patrick Langlois and Maripier Morin.

But Leclerc is right when it says people are looking elsewhere for music. And one of the reasons 98.5 is so dominant is that it’s the only private French-language news-talk radio station in town. Its only competitors in franco talk are Radio-Canada, which has a public service mandate, and BPM Sports, which is sports talk. Bringing QUB Radio into the mix offers some new competition, even if it’s mostly Quebecor columnist talking heads.

Overall, I think it’s a bad sign for the future of radio. We’re seeing stations being shut down or sold off across the country (Corus just shut down its talk station in Hamilton), and if a French-language music station couldn’t make it in Montreal, that looks even worse for smaller markets.

If QUB Radio doesn’t work out to change the station’s fortunes, perhaps it could consider classical music.